Pensions injustice on a global scale

How can it possibly be right that a British expat in Canada, Australia or South Africa receives a smaller UK state pension than someone who has paid the same amount in National Insurance contributions and then retired to the US, the Philippines or Israel? Or the UK for that matter? Yet a final ruling in Strasbourgat the European Court of Human Rights found that an estimated 540,000 British pensioners are not entitled to index linked pensions, by virtue of their geographical location. While others are because the UK has “reciprocal agreements” with the countries in which they live. According to a Department of Work and Pensions spokesperson the making and unmaking of such agreements has had no pattern to it – the last was made 30 years ago – and as such is a classic piece of British governmental ad hoc-ery: the political embodiment of the shibboleth that life isn’t fair. The British government sent lawyers to a human rights court to deny some of its own elderly countrymen and women a benefit to which others are entitled. Now if that isn’t inequality, I don’t know what is. And yet, ironically, its lawyers made the argument that the money taken from these 540,000 pensioners’ National Insurance contributions should be redistributed to the elderly in the UK. This was on the grounds that they should have “priority”. Why? The issue of equality is at the heart of this. And the pity is that the particular definition of this word – for there are many – favoured by the government in this instance excludes those who are least likely to vote – expats. If this took place in the UK with any other group it would constitute social exclusion, which the Labour government is against. And yet with an election in sight Expat’s pages are filling up with material about expat voting and the figures don’t look good. Only around 14,000 expats out of an estimated five million have registered to vote and after 15 years abroad that right automatically vanishes (see Anna Nicholas’s Majorcan Pearls blog about an attempt to force a judicial review on the subject). Now tell me the two things aren’t connected. Expats, register to vote. * Coming soon to Expat: Joan Bakewell, the government’s voice of older people, on the pensions ruling. Return to the Expat front page